Opposite Day
by Jordanna Morgan
Summary: The alterworlder idea of a Halloween party is not at all what Leo expected.


**Title:** Opposite Day  
**Author:** Jordanna Morgan  
**Archive Rights:** Please request the author's consent.  
**Rating/Warnings:** G.  
**Characters:** Leo, Steven, Klaus, Zapp.  
**Setting:** One year after the Halloween at the end of season one.  
**Summary:** The alterworlder idea of a Halloween party is not at all what Leo expected.  
**Disclaimer:** They belong to Yasuhiro Nightow. I'm just playing with them.  
**Notes:** Written as an extra Trick Or Treat Exchange gift for Megkips. Absence of my fandoms kept me from signing up for the exchange myself this year, but I did peek at the requests, and I couldn't resist this question: "How does a city that's already spooky and bizarre handle Halloween?" My answer was partly inspired by the _unique_ ways Japan has adapted Halloween to their culture while differentiating it from Obon, their own festival of the dead.  
By the way, fans of "Goblin Slayer" should recognize a character cameo among the partygoers. He's kind of hard to miss. _*g*_

* * *

Given the colossal disaster that was his first Halloween in Hellsalem's Lot, Leonardo Watch spent the following year sort of dreading what the _next_ one would be like.

It wasn't that he expected it to actually bring another existential threat to the Barrier, or another lunatic trying to take over his all-seeing eyes. But still, its approach on the calendar made him nervous. A day when weird and scary stuff was _supposed_ to happen just seemed to be tempting fate in a town that was weird and scary _every day_.

So when a placidly grinning Steven invited him to experience the "cultural enrichment" of the city's largest alterworlder Halloween party, it took every ounce of Leo's will not to turn and run in the other direction. _Especially_ with the way Zapp was snickering in the background.

As it happened, thanks to an invite Klaus received from some alterworlder bigshot, several of his Libra colleagues would be in attendance. That was really the deciding factor for Leo. If the date of October thirty-first did carry a greater likelihood of spawning chaos than any other day, past experience suggested it was sure to find him, no matter where in the city he was. The party might well turn out to be ground zero just because he _was_ there—but at least if he was hanging out with the people best equipped to _handle_ chaos, it would spare him the wasted time of an inevitable wait for rescue.

With this resolve in mind, Halloween night found Leo warily entering the Talos Hotel's grand ballroom with his comrades… only to halt in his tracks so abruptly that Klaus almost bumped into him.

A blue mothman dressed as a firefighter. Two small and fuzzy green twins in matching pink tutus and tiaras. A four-armed, red-skinned giant in full cowboy regalia. Three different alterworlders wearing Hogwarts robes, and many more recognizably attired as popular characters in human-made movies and TV. Other costumes were unidentifiable, presumably drawn from lore in the wearers' own native regions of the Beyond, but all were similarly… _innocuous_. Not one of the wildly assorted figures in the room had dressed up as something spooky or monstrous. Not even the ones who, well, already _were_ spooky or monstrous by their very nature.

"…_Uhm_?" Leo mused blankly, his brow furrowing in puzzlement above habitually closed eyes.

He heard Steven let out a low chuckle over his shoulder. "Surprised?"

"Yeah, you could say that." Leo watched a lizardman stroll past with an entire platter of cheese-cube _hors d'oeuvres_ in hand, wearing a mockup of a Native American feathered headdress. (He was pretty sure there were people who would object to that as culturally insensitive, but he doubted they'd ever actually say it to the face of a seven-foot-tall reptile with biceps as big as tree trunks.) "I thought this was going to look like every theme-park haunted house in the country mashed into one room."

Klaus chuckled brightly at that; but there was warmth in the sound, rather than any sort of derision.

"There _are_ a small number of alterworlders who are drawn to the darker associations of Halloween," the big man explained. "Some of them use the holiday as an excuse for the kinds of mischief they're already inclined to commit. They _can_ get up to some trouble on this night, but it's usually nothing the HLPD can't handle without our help."

"And others play it up for the human tourists," Steven added. "Every year there are thrillseekers who visit for Halloween, expecting as you did that it must be a wholesale horror show in this city—so naturally, some alterworlders have learned to profit off them by hosting _scarier_ events. Think of them as haunted-house attractions where the performers don't need costumes… and the visitors may not exactly be told there's no _actual_ risk to their lives, because that would just disappoint them."

"Though in reality, those events are of course carefully regulated to ensure that they _are_ safe," noted Klaus. Then he paused uncomfortably. "Or at least, they are now… after a few unfortunate incidents in the _first_ year."

"Incidents?" Leo queried with a faint gulp.

Steven winced. "Let's just say it's what brought to light the need for a written law against _eating_ humans. In the beginning, people just assumed that _not_ eating other intelligent beings would be as intuitive to alterworlders as it is to us. …I'm afraid we had to learn the hard way how _different_ some species' moral value systems really are."

That was all the younger man needed to know about _that_ historical footnote.

"Okay… but _this_?" Leo spread his hands to indicate the astonishingly harmless scene around them, with its whimsically costumed alterworlders playing Twister and bobbing for apples against a backdrop of jack-o'-lanterns and paper streamers. "I haven't seen a Halloween party this… uh, _cute and fluffy_, I guess?—since I was in kindergarten! This is really how most alterworlders want to do it?"

"Put yourself in their shoes," interjected the voice of Zapp Renfro. At some point he must have detached himself unnoticed from the Libra delegation and gone off to peruse the bar, as he was now sauntering back with a drink in hand. He took a hearty swig before eyeballing Leo firmly. "Where's the fun of dressing up like a monster, if just being _yourself_ already makes you other people's nightmare fuel?"

That simple point was almost startling enough to make Leo's eyes open wide. When he thought about it, it made all kinds of sense. Really, how _would_ Halloween be special in Hellsalem's Lot if it was as scary as every _other_ day?

Klaus elaborated gently. "Consider the way children see Halloween, Leo. For them, it's a night when they can pretend to be something other than what they are. _That_ is the aspect of Halloween traditions that many alterworlders have become drawn to. And so, as a _contrast_ to Hellsalem's norm…" With a toothy grin, he nodded toward a purplish many-tentacled being in full clown costume—which was definitely kind of creepy, but somehow nothing like the way clowns on Halloween were _supposed_ to be creepy.

"Wow," Leo murmured slowly, beginning to see the alterworlders' choice of revels in a new way: one that had nothing to do with his gifted eyes.

"So, anyway." An elbow dug sharply into Leo's ribs, as Zapp waved his glass toward the far side of the room. "Whadaya say the two of us pull one over on those guys playing 'pin the snakes on the gorgon'?"

"…Are you asking me to help you _cheat_ by taking over your vision while you're blindfolded?"

"Hey, come on, I just wanna impress that hottie over there. It's not like anybody's making _bets_ on a stupid kids' game."

"They are, and you _know_ it," Steven retorted with a grin. "Under those cute costumes, they're still your typical citizens of Hellsalem's Lot… and if they catch you conning them, I'm sure they _won't_ be so cute anymore."

With that, Leo promptly decided that maybe he _shouldn't_ let his guard down just yet.

* * *

_2019 Jordanna Morgan_


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